Posted by MikeT23 on 8/16/2013 9:43:00 AM (view original):**** sandwich. Sometimes it's the best thing on the menu. Maybe it's better to just be hungry.

Just like RBI and pitcher wins were the best thing we had for a long time. I don't remember hearing you argue that we shouldn't have used them.

There is no statnerd standing around saying "I think, on the whole, that the league average LF would have gotten an RBI in that situation." You either drive in the run or you don't. Not so much with UZR. Some geek is determining if a ball should have been caught.

Posted by MikeT23 on 8/16/2013 9:43:00 AM (view original):**** sandwich. Sometimes it's the best thing on the menu. Maybe it's better to just be hungry.

Just like RBI and pitcher wins were the best thing we had for a long time. I don't remember hearing you argue that we shouldn't have used them.

There is no statnerd standing around saying "I think, on the whole, that the league average LF would have gotten an RBI in that situation." You either drive in the run or you don't. Not so much with UZR. Some geek is determining if a ball should have been caught.

Posted by MikeT23 on 8/16/2013 9:43:00 AM (view original):**** sandwich. Sometimes it's the best thing on the menu. Maybe it's better to just be hungry.

Just like RBI and pitcher wins were the best thing we had for a long time. I don't remember hearing you argue that we shouldn't have used them.

So because we're recognizing that the stat is flawed, we should just roll with it because we didn't recognize that RBIs were largely insignificant?

No, two different points.
1) We don't have a better tool for evaluating defense. You say the stat sucks. Based on what? Variances in performance? I think it's reasonable that a player's defense could vary from year to year. I admit that the stat has limitations, but it's the best thing we have. Which brings up point 2.

2) People are still(!) using RBI as the primary MVP stat. We know with 100% accuracy that RBI is a terribly inaccurate stat for measuring production.

Posted by MikeT23 on 8/16/2013 9:43:00 AM (view original):**** sandwich. Sometimes it's the best thing on the menu. Maybe it's better to just be hungry.

Just like RBI and pitcher wins were the best thing we had for a long time. I don't remember hearing you argue that we shouldn't have used them.

So because we're recognizing that the stat is flawed, we should just roll with it because we didn't recognize that RBIs were largely insignificant?

No, two different points.
1) We don't have a better tool for evaluating defense. You say the stat sucks. Based on what? Variances in performance? I think it's reasonable that a player's defense could vary from year to year. I admit that the stat has limitations, but it's the best thing we have. Which brings up point 2.

2) People are still(!) using RBI as the primary MVP stat. We know with 100% accuracy that RBI is a terribly inaccurate stat for measuring production.

Yea, it doesn't pass the smell test. I can say with some confidence that Mike Trout did not save his team 3 runs defensively in the last handful of games. I feel like I would have seen a couple highlights on Sportscenter. Did he do it subtly? Is he reading balls of the bat better the last few games? What the hell? I could be wrong, but I'm pretty confident that you get UZR from a human being essentially guessing where a ball landed/would have landed, inputting the data into the computer, and the computer determines if he should have caught the ball or not. So if a ball lands in shallow center and the computer determines that Trout should have caught it but didn't, does it also recognize that the outfield was playing no doubles defense up 1 run with a man on 1st in the 9th inning? Pretty sure it's no, it would determine that Trout cost his team 0.3 runs or whatever. It's kinda stupid.

I'm not saying it's a useless stat. But it needs to get better, so I'm not putting much stock into it, that's all. It affects WAR quite a bit, and WAR has become a pretty popular stat of late.

As per #2, because people put too much stock into RBI, I should put too much stock into these UZR numbers?

Posted by MikeT23 on 8/16/2013 9:43:00 AM (view original):**** sandwich. Sometimes it's the best thing on the menu. Maybe it's better to just be hungry.

Just like RBI and pitcher wins were the best thing we had for a long time. I don't remember hearing you argue that we shouldn't have used them.

There is no statnerd standing around saying "I think, on the whole, that the league average LF would have gotten an RBI in that situation." You either drive in the run or you don't. Not so much with UZR. Some geek is determining if a ball should have been caught.

Actually, it's a scout. How else can it be done?

Maybe it's something that can't be done with any accuracy. Maybe doing it is pointless because of that.